Hello everyone. I am ready to start buying my hardware and load up 810. I would like some advice on the hardware for the house. I am going to start with Core and 1 MD. This will grow into about 4 MD's, and various other equipment. This is the first stage and this will be Media only. Phase 2 will be Phone and Automation and then phase 3 will be Security. I have been using 710 for about a year and love it. I have been working in the IT field for many years and can build my own or buy a set up. I have Cat 6 run in my house and have several Gig switches. Thanks in advance for any help.

Core: I want as many SATA drives internally as possible. I would like to have several internal HDTV cards, 2 Gig NIC cards onboard, Don’t care about video this will be a Core only with no monitor attached in a closet. Case doesn’t have to look good or be fancy.

MD: HDMI (would be nice but not necessary), Small, Quiet. Can be diskless, DVD preferred.

I'm using an Ausus M2N-SLI-Deluxe motherboard in my core and it is rock solid. It has 6 sata ports and dual gigabit nics. They are discontinued as of recently, but they can still be found. I'd also recommend that you use a power suppply that is 80 plus certified, and use a low wattage processor such as an AMD BE-2400. 1GB of ram should get you by, but in higher demand applications you may want to settle with 2GB, or even more.

Regarding the MD - unless you want to be out on your own and have a lot of research and setup, it pretty much has to be diskless. I personally haven't had any good experiences with HDMI so I normally use a VGA connection whenever possible. There are a lot of small form factor MD devices available now such as the Asus EEEBox and the MSI WindPC (though they must be set up manually for now, and there are some small problems such as Photo Screen Saver freezing issues).

You mention that you want several tv tuners in your core. This is fine, but it you are using 3 or more tuner cards, you'll probably need a signal booster. In my parents new house, with new cables run, I cannot split the cable signal more than two times without a noticeable loss of quality. The alternative is to put tuners spread throughout the house so that you minimize the signal splitting. LMCE can use a tuner wherever they are, as long as you have enough local area bandwidth.

Thanks everyone for the great information. I am thinking about EEEbox for my MD. M2N-SLI-Deluxe is what I have been using for my core already and has been great. My plan is to find a case that will hold up to 12 Sata drives (like the Fiire Engine) and place it in a closet. No luck finidng the case yet, if anyone has any info on where I can get a case like the fiire one that would be great. I have already installed Amplifiers for my Cable signal and will be able to split it up to 8 times. I was planning on 2 to start and up to 4 in the future.

Thanks again still in the palnning stage of what hardware. Want to do this right the first time

In regards to the case you are looing at, could you not get a taller tower unit and place each drive in it's own bay just so they are all easily accessable. Just makes it easier if one goes down and would probably be a lot easier to work on than having lots of cages.

I've done some searching on the forum on these logicsupply devices... What's our track record with them?

Logicsupply is a store that deals with Mini ITX cases and CPU's... I do believe that the original Cpu that FIIRE used was the VIA EPIA EX15000LG board not listed on this site. The only difference between this board and the other 15000 board that is listed on this site is the GB network card.

The system image for it is now almost 5 versions out of date with our current system image, and we have NO way of making it support new stuff. We can't get the proper Unichrome II drivers from VIA, and there is no interest in doing so.

Please don't be idiots, and fall off the cliff on this one. There are huge reasons we tell people _NOT_ to use these boards. _STAY AWAY FROM THEM_ !!

While I'm a noob with LMCE, I've built several MythTV systems, in fact that's where I was exposed to LMCE. Today is the day I'm jumping off the cliff to put together my first Core/MD system. The process has been pretty scary since the information has been (at least for me) so hard to get at. I'm buying an ASUS M3N78 Pro with and Athlon 64 X2 5050E cpu and 2GB RAM. My history has leaned toward Intel CPUs but it seems that LMCE leans much more strongly toward AMD processors. Trouble is that I'm in a tropical environment (Maui) with no air at home and am concerned about overheating; a historical AMD issue.

Since I've had such a difficult time pulling together clear advantage / disadvantage points for various platforms, I finally decided to just take the leap, hoping that I can use the hardware as an MD if it doesn't perform well as a core.

My perspective regarding the seeming lack of information is that there are a lot of bright people involved in the project, but they are mostly talking with each other.

In attempting to come up with core hardware for example, most of the motherboards on the list are no longer available. I have no real desire to experiment and would much, much rather select something that is stable and a known performer, but have had a really hard time getting at that info. If there were just one WIKI page that said "This is a known stable CORE configuration with current hardware as of March 2009, I'd jump at it in a heartbeat. I hope that the hardware I've chosen fits that definition, that has been my attempt. We'll just have to wait a few days and see if it performs as I hope it will.

I do not think there is a list because of the vast amounts of hardware out there. I know all users are encouraged to create personal pages in the Wiki with their hardware listed so if a search is done by someone else, they can atleast know someone else is using it or if someone has it working.

What I have done before I buy anything is if it doesnt come up in the wiki or the forums, i google ubuntu 7.10 and what ever hardware it is. I assume 8.10 could be used for the new version. For the most part that should let you know if you can use it or not and at the very least possibly let you know what you will have to do in order to get it working.

If all else fails, you can start a thread, but unless you already own the hardware, you cant really troubleshoot and issues and everything is simply speculation if not references from the above forum search.